Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney was born in Massachusetts. He was a mechanical genius that graduated from Yale. After college he traveled to Georgia to be a tutor while preparing for the law. While in Georgia he was told that the South would make a lot of money if someone could invent a machine to separate the seed from cotton. In 1793, within ten days of being told this, Whitney had constructed a rough machine fifty times more effective than the handpicking process. The cotton gin was so simple people were able to copy it without violating his patent, and therefore Whitney didn't make much prophet on his machine.
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US History [1]
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